Random ramblings

Deadline

I read the first of the Newsflesh trilogy, Feed, last year and absolutely loved it, so I had to read the next one, Deadline. Now, warning, if you haven’t read Feed and you want to, go and read my review of that instead, as this review includes spoilers for the first book ……

We left The After The End Times news team at the end of Feed grieving for George, the main principal character and at the beginning of Deadline, about a year later, Shaun, her brother and now only head of After The End Times, is falling to pieces, George is still around, in his head. When a doctor from the CDC turns up and all hell breaks loose moments later, Shaun and his team and thrown back head first into the conspiracy that killed his sister. Expect zombies, virology, mad scientists and some cool social media stuff.

What I really like about the Newsflesh trilogy is that the main characters are so believable, they are thrown into situations where they go through hell but keep going because they have no choice / want to discover the truth / hit back against the bad guys but unlike other thrillers where the heroes go through all sorts of sh*t and don’t really seem that affected, the characters in Newsflesh spend most of the time falling apart, shaking with anxiety and dropping with exhaustion, yet they continue for the same reason I’d continue, because they ‘had to’, it was right thing to do, to uncover the conspiracy.

I have the final part of the trilogy waiting for me now on my iPad, I am not going to leave a gap of 5 months before reading the next one, how about 5 minutes?

(One final note, there are several scenes in Deadline where the characters are basically sitting round a table info dumping, this is always a risky strategy in books but I think necessary here as the plot is quite ‘technical’, so we need to hear the ‘science’ behind the plot line as much as the characters do. If you’ve read the book do you think Grant handled those scenes well? I think she did.)